September 08, 2016

A History Of The World In 100 Objects Explored In National Museum Of Australia Exhibition

A new exhibition at the National Museum of Australia
aims to use 100 objects, including extraordinarily rare artefacts, to
tell two million years of human history.

A History of the World in
100 Objects is a touring exhibition from the British Museum, visiting
the National Museum in Canberra until January next year.

Objects
range from ancient stone artefacts found in Africa, some of the earliest
traces of human history, to US election badges and credit cards.

Director
of the National Museum of Australia, Dr Mathew Trinca, said the head of
a bronze statue of first Roman Emperor Augustus stands out in the
extraordinary collection."Any of these objects in their own right is a treasure," he said.

Brass Hebrew Astrolabe, 1345–1355 CE, probably from Spain.

"But
when I look at something like the bronze head of Augustus, which rarely
leaves the British Museum, I really think how lucky we are to have it
here in Australia."

The collection also includes the Lewis Chessmen, found on the Isle of
Lewis in Scotland and dated to the 12th century, and an Assyrian clay
tablet telling a pre-Christian version of the story of Noah's Ark.

Dr
Trinca said the exhibition was laid out chronologically, allowing
visitors to journey across time through the individual objects."I want people to be inspired by it," he said.

"Inspired by the idea that by looking at things, we can reach into the lives of others."Whether
those others are separated by time and space from us, they're still the
lives of human beings who've experienced life on this planet."

The exhibition visited Perth earlier this year, and has also travelled through Japan and Abu Dhabi.

It was inspired by a popular BBC Radio program, discussing human history through 100 objects from the museum.

Dr Belinda Crerar from the British Museum said it was an ambitious premise for an exhibition."I
can't recall any other exhibition that has quite such a broad scope, it
covers two million years of history all around the globe," she said.

She said given how rare many of the objects were, and the difficulty
in removing and transporting them from the British Museum, it was a
unique collection.